


Personal Best

by puzzleboat



Category: Superman & Lois (TV 2021)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puzzleboat/pseuds/puzzleboat
Summary: If Jordan wants to play football, Clark needs to test his strength. Missing scene-ish from 1x03.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	Personal Best

Clark stood in the back field, pulling his catcher’s mitt on over his hand. It was the one his dad bought him at Fordman’s when he was 13, but it almost still fit. Sure, Clark was sentimental about it, but he was also resigned to the fact that it was maybe about to get destroyed.

Several feet away, Jordan seemed to be really interested in the seams of the old baseball. He turned the ball over in his hand, shifting from foot to foot.

Clark always thought that he’d be the kind of dad who’d play catch with his sons. It hadn’t really worked out that way.

“Okay, Jor!” he called out, settling into a catcher’s crouch. “Throw it as hard as you can. Don’t hold back.”

Jordan screwed up his expression into an exaggerated teenage eye roll, but Clark chose to ignore it and extend his mitt anyway.

Jordan closed his eyes for a second — maybe taking a deep breath, or feeling the sunlight, or even just thinking about how stupid he felt; Clark couldn’t really tell — and then opened them again. He wound back his arm and threw.

The ball went wide, but not particularly far. Basically the throw of a normal human who hadn’t played that much catch with his dad. Clark floated a bit to snatch it out of the air.

“Come on, dude, you can do better than that!” yelled Jon from his perch in the barn window. “Pretend the ball is Sean’s head!”

Clark shot Jon a look of admonition before turning back to Jordan. “Ignore him. Deep breaths. Remember, this isn’t about throwing straight or well. We’re just checking your force.” He tossed the ball back underhand, gently.

“Testing me, you mean,” Jordan huffed as he caught it. “Seeing if I really have super strength.”

“Look, I promised I wouldn’t take you back to the Fortress anytime soon, and I meant it,” Clark said, a twinkle of Superman’s earnestness in his eye. “So if you want to play football, we need to measure your strength some other way.”

“Arm wrestle him!” Jon called from the barn.

Jordan rolled his eyes again and, with 14 years of practice in ignoring his brother behind it, threw the ball again.

This time, it sailed straight and mostly true. Quickly, Clark reached out a couple feet to the left and caught the ball in the mitt, kicking up some of the 20-year-old dust that still caked it. Clark raised his eyebrows as he gave it a quick inspection; some of the seams on the mitt had split.

“Fuck yeah!” Jon whooped, pumping his fist.

“Jonathan!” Clark scolded as Jordan snorted into his sleeve.

“Golly, I mean ‘heck yeah,’ Mr. Superman, sir,” Jonathan said, pursing his mouth to barely keep from laughing. It was exactly the face Lois made when she made fun of Clark.

Clark shook his head and chose to take Jordan’s tack of ignoring Jon. He tossed the ball back. “That was good,” he said. “There was more of you in there. Can you do it again?”

Jordan nodded. “I think so.”

“I’m just gonna—” In the blink of an eye, Clark was further back, about a football field’s worth away from his son.

Jordan waggled his head, his curls bouncing, clearly shaking off an anxious reaction. Before he could second-guess himself, he drew his arm back again and threw.

The ball didn’t quite make it all the way to Clark’s mitt 100 yards away. But it arced high and fell hard. It wasn’t a Superman throw, but it definitely wasn’t human.

Jonathan hollered and punched the air as Jordan beamed. Clark smiled from where he’d caught the ball, floating lazily towards them.

“You boys wanna go for a car ride?” he asked.

***

By the time they parked at Smallville High, it was nearly dusk and basically deserted. Sunday, small town. They entered the school through the locker rooms off the football field which, Jon knew, Coach Gaines never locked.

The twins led Clark through the locker room, even though Clark still remembered the way from decades prior. He couldn’t decide if it smelled worse than he remembered or if that particular power hadn’t kicked in yet when he was a student. He figured it had to be the latter, or there was no way he would have ever come to school.

Down the hall they found the weight room. It was fairly bare bones, but well-used, with some of the leather peeling off the benches. But the weight plates were there, and that’s all they needed.

Jordan looked a little queasy, and Clark thought he probably knew why. There was a reason he didn’t test his powers in quite this way when he was a kid, that when Pete Ross asked him how strong or fast he was, he didn’t know how to answer. Somehow, putting a number to it made it more real than if you were just jacking up the tractor or running across town. It made it more weird, more inhuman. Harder to run away from, no matter how fast you were.

Clark didn’t want to hurt Jordan. But it was about the other kids, about their safety. If Jordan’s strength was anywhere near Clark’s, even a reasonable fraction of it, then Jordan shouldn’t even be play-tackling his brother without sufficient training. He knew that Jordan might never forgive him for standing in the way of fun, but Clark would never forgive himself if a kid got hurt on his watch.

It was all very Jonathan Kent, he knew. Clark had spent so much of his time as a father doing a pale imitation of his own, and not often to successful results. But he had one advantage that Jonathan didn’t have, he realized.

He understood.

“Hey, Jor, c’mere,” Clark said, sitting down on one of the weight benches and patting the empty seat next to him. Jon moved aside to let his brother pass, giving him a nod as he leaned against one of the machines in the corner. Jordan quirked his eyebrow in response, a wordless conversation passing between them. Every day, Clark was glad there were two of them.

Jordan sat down and Clark turned to him. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re not a science experiment, you’re my son. I know it can be disheartening to be reduced to numbers or to actions. That’s not what’s happening here.”

Jordan turned away from Clark’s gaze, picking at his fingertips. “Yeah, I know,” he said unconvincingly.

“And whatever happens today,” Clark said, “or tomorrow, or years from now — whatever you’re able to do, or not do, or almost do — it doesn’t matter to me. You’ll still be the same person you always were.”

“A half-alien?” he muttered. Out of the corner of Clark’s eye, Jon twitched.

“Our son,” Clark said. “Sons. Mine and your mom’s. Not Superman’s sons. Ours.”

Jordan turned to him with a skeptical expression, and Clark knew from Lois’ look on his face that he was ready to argue semantics. Then he seemed to decide against it and just nodded.

“But sometimes,” Clark conceded, “you are going to have to think like Superman’s son. And that means figuring out how to use your powers in the way that helps the most people while hurting the fewest.” He clapped a hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “That’s all it is. It’s about doing net good.”

With that, he stood up and started gathering weight plates from the corner, scooping up the stack of 50s and balancing them on a flat palm like a diner waitress serving flapjacks. Jordan and Jon shared another look. “Come on,” he said to the boys, “help me load a few of these on.”

***

The thing was, Jordan knew he was getting stronger. He didn’t have to test it; he could feel it.

He hadn’t known how to put it into words to Jon. It was the little things. Carrying a stack of heavy textbooks, helping out his dad on the farm, doing more than a couple pull-ups on Jon’s pull-up bar.

Until he’d decided to play football, he tried to stop himself from thinking about it too much. But if anything, being on the field made him feel stronger. He let himself throw the bigger kids around. And at the end of tryouts, he was panting more from exhilaration than exertion.

He’d honestly been afraid to come to the weight room before his dad decided to take him there. He didn’t like that his apparent limits would determine whether or not he could keep playing, but on the flip side, he was glad that his dad and brother were there with him.

Developing superpowers could feel pretty solitary sometimes.

Jon, for one, could always tell when Jordan needed him to pull some of the focus. “So, Dad,” Jon said as Jordan laid down on the weight bench. “Have you ever tested yourself like this?”

“Is this your way of asking how much I bench?” Clark chuckled. Jon shrugged a shoulder unselfconsciously.

“I didn’t for a long time,” Clark admitted. “I didn’t want to. It wasn’t until I was older than you boys that I trained in the Fortress. Eventually, I was tested more rigorously at STAR Labs. But it took me a long time to warm up to the idea of scientists studying me.”

Jordan shivered. It was weird to think of his dad growing up with a fear of being vivisected.

“Anyway, yes, Dr. Hamilton did make me lift weights,” Clark said to Jon. “But they were specially forged from dwarf star matter. The densest material in the solar system.” He smiled, lopsided. “These mass market sets don’t even go up to a ton.”

Jordan glanced at Jon, who looked a bit slack-jawed, the way he did when they saw their dad fly for the first time. And the fifteenth.

“But Jor,” Clark said, loading one last plate onto the barbell and looking down at his son, “don’t think about numbers. There’s no right or wrong answer here.”

“I think there’s two right answers,” Jon offered. “Either you get to play football or fight crime.”

“Jon, please,” Clark chastised lightly. But it did make Jordan feel a little better.

***

It turned out that Jordan was definitely stronger than the average high school athlete, and probably stronger than most professional ones. Both Clark and Jordan knew in their bones that his strength would continue to grow, but neither said it out loud.

All three Kent men agreed that, with some conditions — training with Clark for control and restraint, no cheating or showboating on the field, a one-strike policy should any other player get the tiniest bit hurt — Jordan could keep playing football. (Clark would run it by Lois later. As always, she had full veto power.)

Clark knew that it was scary to measure exactly how alien you were, but he also knew that there was a certain peace that came with the knowing. When your body was changing and you didn't know what tomorrow would bring, a little certainty could go a long way.

And if Jordan could feel a little more normal out on the football field a few times a week, all the better.

He pulled the truck in front of the farmhouse, and the twins moved to hop out of the car almost the second he shifted into park. They trudged toward the house together, Jon slinging an arm around Jordan as they went. It was the happiest he’d seen them both in months.

Sure, Clark had learned a bit more about how Jordan’s powers worked, but he’d learned more about how Jordan worked: in more than a few ways, like Clark.

He could work with that.


End file.
